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Innotech Solar supplies 2MW of modules to Italian textile company

The Scandinavian-German solar PV manufacturer Innotech Solar (ITS) has supplied modules with a total output of around 2 MW to the Italian textile producer Limonta spa

Innotech Solar supplied the company with two rooftop solar plants, with outputs of 720 kWp and 466 kWp respectively. The arrays were installed on the company’s buildings in Lombardy, Northern Italy, in 2013. When these were found to have performed excellently, an additional two solar installations were deployed in March 2014 at Cologno al Serio and Costa Masnaga in the same region with outputs of 499 kWp and 199 kWp respectively.

The company’s textile factories use around 80 percent of the solar power generated by the modules thereby saving Limonta Spa more than 250,000 Euros in costs each year. The factory production lines have been designed to enable them to consume the majority of the generated solar electricity immediately, thereby eliminating the need for energy storage systems.

“Textile factories consume an enormous amount of power, which makes the prospect of being able to produce their own electricity so appealing to owners” said Giuseppe Guida, Managing Director of GM Solar, which constructed the plants. “Limonta spa, a leading Italian textile manufacturer established in 1893, is looking forward positively to the future by proving that investing in sustainability also makes great sense economically. We decided to use ITS modules due to the European production and the especially low CO2 balance. We were also won over by their exceptional quality and extremely high level of performance and since choosing to work with ITS modules, we have used them to construct four PV projects on the roofs of the textile group’s buildings.”

Limonta Spa is a leading Italian textile manufacturer established in 1893. Developments within the textile and solar industries within recent years have followed a similar path according to Emanuele Paese, Head of Sales & Marketing Europe at Innotech Solar. Both sectors have seen increases in the internationalization of production and the globalization of markets as well as rapidly sinking prices, and the few companies that have been able to withstand these conditions are those that have implemented high-quality, sustainable production processes.

Innotech Solar employ a particularly eco-friendly production process resulting in PV modules that have a carbon footprint that is currently around 50 percent smaller than that of conventional modules. According to the company the modules save the same quantity of CO2 as is used to manufacture them after only four months of operation. Innotech’s carbon footprint is further improved by the use of 100 percent renewable energy at the company’s manufacturing sites in Sweden and Germany, as well as the short transport routes. The modules are subjected to a multitude of tests conducted by independent experts, such as the Fraunhofer ISE and CSP Institutes, the Photovoltaik-Institut Berlin and PV Lab.